Lost links & Re-ups

On any post, if the link is no longer good, leave a comment if you want the music re-uploaded. As long as I still have the file, or the record, cd, or cassette to re-rip, I will gladly accommodate in a timely manner all such requests.

Their debut single The Interior was released in November 1983 on their own Black Lagoon label. Its follow-up Grunt Cadillac Hotel reached number 6 in the UK indie chart in 1984. Their Big Jugular EP & follow-up single The Judge both made the indie top 10. A number three slot for their debut album Rumblein 1985 led to tours of Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, & Scandinavia.

Three more albums followed in as many years as the band consolidated their sound: This Train (1986); Opium Den EP (1987); & Evil Hour (1988).Inca Babies also recorded four sessions for BBC Radio’s John Peel Show between 1984 & 1986.

Despite an ever-changing line-up of drummers & singers around the core of Stafford & Marten, the band released a further six singles. Clint Boon of Inspiral Carpets played keyboards on Evil Hour & as noted, Hulme multi-instrumentalist Alan Brown of bIG fLAME & The Great Leap Forward bands was also drummer for a time. The band called it quits by 1989. Marten & Stafford re-grouped under the new name Hound God with a Tumour for a short while in the 90s.

In 2006 Cherry Red released a 'Best of' compilation Plutonium. The band reformed a year later & recruited Gold Blade drummer Rob Haynes. This line-up performed at several venues in the UK & Stafford began work on a new album until the sudden death of Bill Marten in August 2008 put an end to those plans.

This is what Harry Stafford had to say about Opium Den:

''The
Incas change direction. I took over on vocals and found that I could
get the songs to do more of what I wanted them to do, so the overall
effect here is rather pleasing. ''Devil in my Room'' and ''Big Cypress''
are favourites and we still play ''Opium Den'' to this day. If Rumble
is our five star album this is our four and a half star album. We did a
video of ''Opium Den'' with young, very keen filmmakers Adam T. Burton
and Mick Conefrey in China Town and a Hulme flat that was made to
belittle the Yacht Rock videos of people like Duran Duran and Ultravox.
Looking at it now it's just quite brilliant and stands as a great piece
of archive/document on 80s counterculture. ''